


The New York School

by jouissant



Category: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:50:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This would be Allen’s last painting, but he didn't know it yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New York School

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milkandhoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkandhoney/gifts).



> You suggested an AU where Allen and Lucien were both artists, but not writers, and an AU where Allen was the guilty party, so I ran with those. I had a lot of fun with this; I hope you enjoy!

“The light in here,” Lucien said. “Isn’t it phenomenal?” 

They stood in a derelict shoe factory, ankle-deep in pigeon shit. The floor was scattered with wormy scraps of leather and the air hung heavy with the stench of ammonia. 

“Don’t know,” said David. “You’d have to wash the windows first.” 

“I think it’s perfect,” said Allen quickly. 

Lucien stood at the grime-streaked window, pale fingers pressed to the glass. When Allen spoke he turned, cocked his head and gave Allen that look, the one that made him feel pinned like he was the prettiest butterfly in Lu’s collection. He shifted from foot to foot and kicked at an abandoned scrap of shoe. From the look of it, it was a brogue. Next to him, he heard David scoff.

“That’s the spirit,” Lucien said. “That’s the goddamn spirit.” 

In truth, the light in the room was thin and grey. But outside it was February and freezing, so Allen supposed he’d give the light a pass. Besides, it was Lucien, which meant he wasn’t thinking of the light so much as the _potential_ of the light, of the light that might stream in when the windows had been cleaned, the floors swept and good clean canvas set up in a westerly direction. They wouldn’t be up for the east to be any use. That was just being realistic. 

In the end, Allen cleaned the windows with the same zeal with which he’d swept his parents’ floors back home. He put the radio on and raised a sopping rag to the glass again, grey runoff soaking his sleeves. He jammed them up over his elbows over and over. Behind him Lucien sat on a lumpy armchair they’d dragged up from a goodwill pile on the street, sucking on a cigarette and watching Allen’s progress. 

“Little to the left,” he said. And when Allen stretched to reach: “There you are.” 

Afterwards they went out drinking. Lucien stole a scotch and water from some stiff at the bar and slapped the table with his palms. “The thing is,” he said. “The thing is. Think about a blue. You know? Think about the purity of a blue, of--of a cobalt, or a cerulean. The way it pulls at you. Maybe you feel that blue deep in your heart, maybe you carry it with you when you’re walking down the street, and maybe it’s about that blue, and not about Man In A Peacoat On 3rd Avenue, or however you’d paint it. It’s not--” 

“It’s not Dick and Jane,” Allen said. “It’s not a picture book.” 

Lucien smiled again, his look like syrup. Allen’s gut felt heavy with it, like it might seep anywhere. He had to spread his legs and adjust himself under the table. 

“Where’ve you been all my life?” Lucien asked. 

New Jersey, Allen thought.

Allen’s father painted with a feverishness Allen had always envied. The way he surrendered to it, the way he seemed unreachable, beyond hearing or speech. Allen thought sometimes of his mother, wondered if Louis Ginsberg’s selective dumbness had been as frustrating as he imagined, a wall to batter against as fruitlessly as a moth. He guessed the walls at Greystone were just as thick. When Allen looked at Lucien he could feel what he thought his father might have felt. Lucien moved with a kind of contained delirium, and Allen thought if he could just get close enough he could step right into it, and then who knew what would happen.

“Paint me a picture,” Lucien said, body twisting in the window like a piece of ribbon. Allen swiped his brush against the palette and said, _okay_. 

***

On the nights Lucien went out by himself, Allen would paint and paint. Bill’s drugs stoked a strange kind of fire he couldn’t put a name to. The men he painted would loom up onto his canvases, masses of disparate shapes. They were abstract, indistinguishable as figures to anyone but him, and--he thought--perhaps Lucien. They looked at him from beneath triangles of yellow hair, slashes for eyes in a fierce shade of blue. Cornflower, Allen thought, or robins-egg, but not the clean flat pure blue Lu would want. He’d shove the paintings in a corner when Lu came over, when they’d flop on Allen’s bed and smoke and Lu would talk, just yammer on til Allen could barely keep his eyes open. 

“I think we should break into the Met and paint over a Rembrandt,” Lucien said. Or, another time: “I heard the Germans are looting all the art in Europe; I heard they marched into the Louvre and took the Mona Lisa right off the wall.” 

“That’s horrible,” Allen said, half asleep. 

“I think it’s perfect,” he said, his voice electric. “I hope they burn them all.” 

“Come on, Lu.” 

“No, listen. It’d be perfect. We can start over. We’ll go there, you and I, we’ll fill every room in every stuffy old castle with our paintings. They’ll clamor for them, for something new, something real, something honest.”

Whose paintings? Allen heard David’s voice ask. But Lucien’s face was lit from within; he looked the very definition of ecstatic, like one of Bernini’s saints convulsing in marble. So instead of letting Lucien’s fervor take him aback Allen simply stared, and thought of how he could possibly paint all this sticky, coursing _feeling._  
One night he was working when there came a pounding at the door. When Allen opened up Lucien slouched against the jamb, eyes heavy-lidded, mouth pornographic. Allen was drunk and unawares, and might have failed at circumspection, but if Lucien noticed he didn’t let on. 

“David,” Lucien said. 

“Yeah?” 

He waved his hand like Allen ought to know. 

“Well,” said Allen. “Why don’t you come in and we can talk about it.” 

They lay on the mattress. Lucien was on the outside, his arm splayed out over the floor. He waved his cigarette in circles as he talked, the glowing tip oscillating in the low light. Allen let his eyes cross as he watched it swoop like a bat over water. He could paint that, he thought. Take a break from his blond boys. 

“So he follows me, you see,” Lucien said. “And try as I might I just can’t seem to get away.” 

Lucien’s body was warm where it nestled alongside Allen’s. He’d finished his smoke now, laid a chapped hand on the white flat of his belly. His nails were bitten down to the quick. Allen imagined leaning over to kiss them, taking one into his mouth and soothing the angry pink with his tongue. Lucien rolled onto his side. He pressed his face against the pillow and shut his eyes, pearly lids rosy and vulnerable as his fingers. He made a little animal noise, a whimper or a snuffle. 

“Let’s get rid of him,” Allen said without thinking. 

Lucien looked up from the pillow and smiled. 

***

The blood, Allen thought, was finer than anything he could make from cochineal, from cadmium. He wanted to paint with it, so paint he did. David watched him until he couldn't watch any more, and Lucien too, a pale daub in the corner of the room. 

“Ginsy,” said Lucien. “Allen. I...I think we ought to call the police.” 

Allen looked back at him. His wrists had gotten wet again. His nose itched and he dragged a hand across his cheek. He could smell copper and salt, and he screwed his eyes shut and thought of the Merchant Marine. Lucien sounded afraid. Allen couldn't imagine why. He drew his arm back and flung his laden brush at the canvas. Action painting, they’d call it later. Kline and Pollock and de Kooning. This would be Allen’s last painting, but he didn't know it yet. 

He dipped the brush back in and let the red fly.


End file.
